Easier Ways to Say I Love You

By Lucy Fry

A memoir on love, lust and attachment: one woman's remarkable and candid account of transforming a difficult and uncomfortable love triangle into an honest polyamorous relationship.
Lucy Fry's story opens with the heady and impassioned affair she embarked on during her wife's pregnancy. It is a relationship that appears to be unstoppable, perhaps even addictive, despite guilt and self questioning.
With intense and unflinching honesty, she takes us on a compelling journey from childhood trauma and addiction to sobriety, from infidelity to ethical non-monogamy, and—perhaps most intensely of all—from her fear of parenthood to her exquisite joy at having a son.
L and B's love for their new baby, 'The Boy', changes the dynamic once again. They fumble through early parenthood, in a way that many will recognise, while at the same time trying to fathom and fashion a unique journey of their own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Myriad Editions
• Release date: Feb 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781912408603

Lucy Fry

Lucy Fry is a journalist who writes widely on physical and mental health. A graduate from Oriel College, Oxford, with an MSc in Creative Writing from Edinburgh University, she is training to be a psychotherapist. She lives in South London with her wife and son.

Book preview

1

Just Sex

If I could remember many of the actual words that passed between A and me when we first met, I think they would only be interesting to us, and perhaps only interesting within a definite time frame — the time frame in which we’re fucking — in which everything we say or do becomes alight with furious possibility, each of our words perceived latterly as meaningful even though they might only have been yeah or huh and what?

But visuals, movements, thoughts: these are more trustworthy reminders. Lean fibres of the muscles on A’s arms sliding like ghosts upon her skin; the surprising cool of the late summer dusk and that our bare arms had goosepimples; the persistence with which A’s fingers stroked the label on her bottle of non-alcoholic beer, scuffing it just enough so that she could use the other hand to pick it uncleanly off. Also my disbelief when she told me she was forty-seven years old and my unspoken reflection upon how attractive she was for someone of that age — someone twelve years my senior — and how her eyes shimmered like ice.

I wanted you from the first moment I saw you, she will tell me, months later when we’re naked: sometimes it’s just that simple.

. . .

Why don’t we have a word for when the seasons switch?

We have apricity (the warmth of sun in winter) and brontide (the sound of distant rumbling thunder) but nothing for that inter-seasonal no-man’s-land between summer and autumn when I next meet up with A.

I walk into the café, late, after a frantic rush to meet a deadline. Immediately I spot A, seated in the corner, staring at her screen, scrolling with her thumb.

Her shirt fits tightly round her breasts, its crisp white cotton covered in blue parrots, playful and bright. When she looks up I notice how the parrots match her eyes, both of them quite royal. But only for a moment: a few steps closer and A’s eyes have altered to somewhere closer to cyan. Next look they’re marble, almost white, and, once we’re seated, almost green.

A is mercurial like this. But I don’t know this part quite yet. Still there is something here too about glass. Either she is like glass or she wishes to be like glass: seemingly transparent but also solid. And very dangerous when broken.

But I don’t know this bit yet either. All I know is that A is good at chit-chatting and being charming. She asks me plenty of questions. Keeps me talking for a while. Yet, when my turn comes to ask the questions, A is light upon her feet. Deflecting penetration, she can say lots and give a little. She can seem open but stay closed, offering facts with no depth, or depth with no detail. A, it seems, is for Anonymous, though I do learn she has a young daughter (and an ex-wife), that she is currently dating a few people and is preposterous at sleep, staying awake often until four, and getting up at seven.

But that’s OK, she says: three hours is fine for me.

She has a job that requires travel. Spends too much time on trains.

And in hotels, she adds: alone.

I don’t remember what I tell A about myself. Except that B is five weeks pregnant, and that sex, for us, has not been easy; we are a bit mismatched, we’ve been struggling for quite a while.

That sounds … frustrating? A suggests.

Well, yes, but this isn’t the time for breakthroughs, I say quickly: she’s sick and lethargic. She wants to sleep from eight p.m.

I could have added that she’s scared. B thinks that sex will harm the baby. But I don’t, of course — who would?

So you need sex? says A, smiling.

Yes, please! I say.

Although I mean it as a joke.

Don’t I?

What if I’d answered no, not really? What might have never happened — stayed unwritten?

Then come to Leeds with me tonight, says A: I’m in a hotel. I’m alone.

I shuffle about awkwardly.

Uh. Oh, wow, A. Thanks. Very flattered but … no.

Pause.

I mean I’d like to but I can’t.

Pause.

I mean I should be back for dinner, um … in London.

Pause.

Fair enough, A shrugs: your loss. She sighs, and, with a glint, she says: So now we’ll always not have Leeds.

I laugh and turn to leave. Before I do though, I lean forward, intending to give her a hug.

As soon as our bodies touch, she flinches. She might as well have pulled away.

OK see ya, says A, and turns to go.

See ya, I wave: I guess we’ll always not have Leeds.

. . .

After that:

Obsessively, meticulously, I delete all trace of communication between A and me.

I also turn off any beeps, clicks and rings that might come out of my phone or computer when she sends me a message.

I leave my laptop hanging around the house, open and unlocked.

I make a big show of not wanting my phone in the bedroom any more because our time in bed is for connection.

I promise B I love her — millions — and am excited to meet our baby.

I continue messaging A each day, taking two steps forward and one step back: playing, dancing, teasing because I know this thing is on.

I admit to myself that I need sex more than integrity. My reddest parts are now in charge.

I tell B that my new friend, A, lives by the sea and has invited me to stay. I’d like to go for a night, I say: get out of the city and do some writing.

I do not look B in the eye when she responds: Of course, L, you must go. I know you need to get away sometimes to write.

I feel unsettled by myself. By my plain-sight-hiding, brazen deception. And then, when my mother-in-law gets duped by a bogus salesperson who steals her passport and bank details, I can’t help wondering if maybe I’m like that guy. Am I so different really, now?

. . .

And that is how and why, about four weeks since that first drink, I end up travelling to A’s city, for a proposed night of just sex.

As I wander slowly from the station down to our rendezvous, a grand old pier, I try to justify to myself the action that I’m taking, the thing I’m about to do. I remind myself that I am dissatisfied with monogamy and disillusioned by the far-too-civil partnership between my wife and me. That this loving stalemate we’ve been struggling with lately has made our bed a place of greater pain than pleasure. Recently the gap has grown too vast.

I tell myself that it’s irrelevant that B is seven weeks pregnant. That this is a sober choice, in keeping with my five proud years of teetotalism; that it is less about selfishness and more about the taking of responsibility for one’s needs. Here, this night with A, is about scratching an itch, and nobody need know, nobody need ever find out at all, and life can continue tomorrow as if the whole thing never happened.

When none of this makes me feel better, I become righteous with indignation, something I’ll realise later that I use mostly as a foil for lust and shame (or both) before negotiating with the dubious voices in my head by reflecting that these things are never as exciting as they promise. I reassure myself that this night with A will probably be an awkward display of unfamiliar nakedness which will almost certainly lead to some fairly mediocre sexual contact and the ensuing worry that I should probably get myself tested hovering around my guilty head. Yes, I’ll learn (but didn’t I know it all along?) that this past fortnight’s intoxicating flurry of messages between A and me — the stomach-flips, sodden knickers and furtive wanks — has been the best part of it all, while the actual consummation will prove depressing, upsetting, redundant. Leaving me tomorrow to climb humbly down off my horny perch and return to B, embodied with a fresh desire to be kinder and more patient — to stop always hankering after more, finally seeing from the inside out how unbelievably pointless it is to take any such risk with a beautiful eight-year-long relationship just for something as superficial as feeling desired again.

. . .

This is not quite how it goes.

. . .

I have considered messing with the truth. Not the inevitable kind of messing — the editing out of unnecessary details that any remotely intriguing story demands — but properly tampering with it. Dressing it up as fiction. Dressing it down with a pseudonym. To make myself look better. Worse perhaps too. Or, most terrifying: to stop myself looking in these places at all.

Many will call this self-indulgent. And, in a way, they will be right. But is there no meaning in courage? In owning up to a particular story, as if it were a crime? Sabotage, perhaps, or Indecent Exposure. But certainly not Fraud. Certainly not Forgery.

Though I know, of course, that Truth doesn’t exist. That there is A’s story, B’s story and my story; the moment any one of those leaves our heads, becoming exposed to air, an unstoppable kind of oxidisation takes place.

. . .

Back to that early October night: A’s coastal home just one hour’s train ride from my city. I am the first to arrive, so loiter by the pier, catching conversation snippets, the crude sniping noises of nearby arcade machines and, further away, the maternal shush of the waves against the shore.

It all mixes together inside my ears: a lurid panoply of sound; the sounds of life; the noise of waiting.

Fancy seeing you here, says A when she arrives.

Strange, isn’t it? I smile, feeling the wooden slats beneath my feet, gaps not quite big enough to fall into.

A is dressed all in black — jeans, boots, jumper and leather jacket — save for the tartan flat cap, green and red, cocked on her head. She leads the way up on to the path, sticking close to the sea’s edge, where we walk for around ten minutes. During this time we don’t say much: just pleasantries to help us get from there to here, to the moment A steers me away from the sea and back up, across to the road, leading me through the wide revolving door of one of the city’s best-known hotels.

I hang back, eyes down and collar up, while A checks in. The vast clock above reception says seven p.m., its hands continuing to tick as I pull my gaze away, following A up two flights of the imperious gold and green spiral staircase, along the corridor, into the room.

It is spacious, quiet, plush.

Nice, I mutter: nice.

Glad you like, A shrugs: I was lucky. Got a good deal.

I drop my bag and head across to the big bay window, pull back the heavy fuchsia curtains and stare out of the glass. The view is dramatic maybe, but not unique, with refracted neon lights, the promise of hedonism bouncing off waves and dazzling my eyes.

Next: the sound of bedcovers giving way, like an exhalation, as A’s body lands on them.

How long have you been married? she asks, half-heartedly.

Really? I laugh. You want to talk about that now?

Not really, A sighs: I’m just making conversation.

I see, I say. Six years, then, that’s how long.

Longer than I managed, she mutters.

The windows rattle in the wind. Beneath the gloss and glamour of this hotel are imperfections. Poorly sealed glass. Dust in the gaps. It’s all just gone unnoticed.

Something must happen now, I think; I should go over there, now, and fuck. That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? A has made it clear this is just sex: that it will happen once, twice perhaps. She wants no more from me than this.

Yet for all the years I have awaited this moment — longed for a chance to explore the female body without booze, drugs or relationship — I am now frozen to the spot. Somehow, as if wrangling with a cramp, I persuade my body into action. Pick up one foot and then the other. Walk over to the bed and sit down. Then, lean back until I’m lying there next to A.

I’ve never slept with anyone for the first time sober, I mumble, loudly enough.

But A is not perturbed. Don’t worry, she says, her lips descending towards mine: I do a good line in confidence.

I taste her breath before I feel it: a warm yellow musk; semi-sweet particles of want that make their way into my mouth.

A is more insistent than B, I reflect. A’s kisses say I’m taking. B’s touch just says hello. But it’s also me that says I want. It’s also me that says just take. Impossible to ignore the building pressure between my legs. A’s eyes bright blue with X-ray vision. Her hands now kneading at my belt.

So this is how this starts, I think; so that’s how this begins.

Next morning I wake neither to regret nor disappointment. Rather I find myself immersed in self-deceit. Because I’m trying not to think. That’s right — I’m trying not to know. I swear I didn’t want to feel this. And now … whether to laugh or cry? Or just to let it happen?

Because anatomy is a bastard. And the length of a woman’s fingers.

It makes a difference, actually.

. . .

But I don’t wish to ask why but instead where. Where is the point of infidelity? Is it in the intent or the act? In the impulse or the decision? The rendezvous or the undressing? These are the questions I will concern myself with later, much later, some months after the first digression.

Of course there is no definitive answer; there is only an opinion. My own experience is that the point of unfaithfulness can be located long before the sexual act took place. It was before I first kissed A, before we talked, before we met.

Let me be clear: I am not saying that it was fated (quite the opposite — I still consider myself wholly responsible for my own actions and believe that I absolutely could have resisted) but merely that there was a momentum here, a story already in motion long before any kind of attraction occurred.

It begins with the sense of longing.

. . .

I discover, quickly, that A is for Addictive. We rendezvous a week later: just sex, a second time.

Once we’re into it, A asks:

So, L … you think you’d like to be tied up?

It is more statement than question. I feel my confidence dissolve. Might pull a pillow over my face and hide, had A not got such a tight grip on both my arms.

Do it, I think, a little more desperately than I’d like: don’t ask me first just do it.

My skin is an organ, expanding and contracting at A’s touch. She draws the back of a hand against my collarbone and down, down, on to the top of one breast. I feel my chest rise and fall as if it’s being pumped from the inside.

A removes every item of clothing from the top half of her body before reaching up between her thighs and removing something else. Now dressed only in a black leather skirt, she pulls my arm off the bed and shakes it like a rope. Takes my left wrist roughly in one hand. It is a simple movement, both friendly and aggressive. And yet it seems to hold a clear message: right now, L, you’re mine. Today you’re mine and not your wife’s.

Tell me what you want, she whispers.

I have an image but it won’t speak.

A drops hold of my arms so that they flop by my side before she takes her knees off the bed, first left then right, and stands instead. Over me, watching: she is looking up and down my naked body the way a chess master stares at the board.

The Queen, I think. She is the Queen and I her Rook.

A inhales. Points behind her to a wardrobe.

Here’s what’s going to happen, she declares: you’re going to go over there, and I’m going to tie you, naked, to those handles. Then I’m going to leave you there. I’m going to go into the bathroom and get changed and you can just sit on the floor and wait for me to come out.

What? I want to scream. Just what the actual fuck? This isn’t what I meant! It’s not what we agreed.

But we never did agree on anything, did we? There was only the suggestion, the kind that slips out of the corner of one’s mouth, swift and unexamined: I suppose I do kind of maybe have some sort of being-tied-up thing … And I had thought she understood: that it was more about surrender than persecution. More about trust than humiliation.

I shake my head, and manage no.

Oh, yes, says A, smiling.

No, I say, louder this time: just no, absolutely and completely no.

We hover in silence, naked and apart.

. . .